Is there need for a reasonable limit on FPP length?

March 18, 2005 4:53 AM

Is there need for a reasonable limit on FPP length ?
posted by sophist to Feature Requests at 4:53 AM (57 comments total)

I'd prefer it to be a process of education about what is acceptable, I think we knew that was something that went with having a pile of new people join up. How can that education be applied is the problem I suppose, but while pile-ons in threads are discouraged it can still be mentioned as an aside to comments in offending threads. Offenders are occasional I think, a word to them should stop it, if not, then make an issue of it in here. No point losing an interesting FPP over it through drawing up some inflexible rulebook.
posted by biffa at 5:10 AM on March 18, 2005

How would you enforce that? I could just put [more inside] and rail on in the comments ad nauseum.
posted by Eideteker at 5:12 AM on March 18, 2005

I could just put [more inside] and rail on in the comments ad nauseum.

Wouldn't that be preferable, though? If a post takes up the entire screen in the blue, it's annoying. I know you can scroll past it, but it's tough to ignore an entire screen. If you can't generate enough interest to get people to click inside in a hundred words, you should probably rephrase.
posted by anapestic at 5:17 AM on March 18, 2005

I posted this to feature requests. What im thinking of is a max on the actual size of the box that you put your link into, not a retroactive callout in the comments of "Your post was 5 characters too long!". Just make it long enough for ~100 words (paragraphish length).

You can [more inside] all you want, all im asking is to keep the multi-paragraph direct quotes off the front page.
posted by sophist at 5:42 AM on March 18, 2005

on post: what anapestic said .
posted by sophist at 5:43 AM on March 18, 2005

I think the format of this example makes it AgendaFilter over something informative and the length is a bit ridiculous. If there's a lot up front go the way of the y2karl small tag.

That said I'd rather stay self-policing rather than have any kind of limit.

I think my latest FPP [self link!] is pushing the upper limit. I did consider a [more inside] after the first para but having the final question at the end made me put the whole thing on the front page.
posted by i_cola at 5:49 AM on March 18, 2005

1000 characters, not including mark-up.
posted by sciurus at 5:49 AM on March 18, 2005

How would you enforce that? I could just put [more inside] and rail on in the comments ad nauseum.

Well yeah, that's exactly what I would expect to happen. Note that threads can be filled with any old junk rambling on anyway, and that there's a general tolerance for that. Having a more inside that just goes on at length about the FPP would at least be rambling in the right direction.
posted by biffa at 6:12 AM on March 18, 2005

I also like the idea of limiting the visible FPP stuff, and would like to see the [more inside] feature as implemented in AskMe. The visible portion doesn't have to be merely a teaser, but the [mi] would work great for folks who want to put HUGE amounts of commentary or quotations (usually without any links) in their post.

I think it's more aesthetically pleasing, and makes it easier to scan the main page. I just don't understand why people put huge block quotes or long commentaries in the FPP, because it looks weird and it's just one more thing I have to scroll past.

Obviously we can all argue about this until the cows come home, but I think it would increase the readability of the site.
posted by MrZero at 6:29 AM on March 18, 2005

Geez, people are going to whine and complain about anything that isn't firmly set into stone, and then they will whine an complain about how these set in stone rules make this site miserable.

Keep it free the way it is, and if it's abuse of an FPP, someone will deep-six it. I really don't see where the inconvenience is here.

(personally, I saw that post yesterday and didn't even notice the length of it until it was brought up here)
posted by furtive at 6:44 AM on March 18, 2005

It was a bit long. Wouldn't have minded if it was well-written and/or link-rich, but it seems a bit pointless if you're simply quoting from thr page you've linked to any way. Choice quotes do come in handy, but in that length a follow-up comment would be more welcome. Derailing the thread is unnecessary, though, I agree.
posted by nthdegx at 6:48 AM on March 18, 2005

"Is there need for a reasonable limit on FPP length ?"

I'd say 1500 words is a reasonable upper limit.
posted by mischief at 7:01 AM on March 18, 2005

3 words including link.
posted by Stynxno at 7:07 AM on March 18, 2005

If one were implemented, wouldn't it really just be another thing for Matt to bust his ass trying to perfect only to have half the community complain about it every day because they don't like the [number of words/method of limiting/options(or lack thereof)/whatever]. I mean, we self police for a reason, right? Some people made a point of mentioning the length of the post to the guy in the thread, let's see if he keeps doing it. I suspect he won't.
posted by shmegegge at 7:18 AM on March 18, 2005

Character/word limits in the entry box would eliminate long link description title tags a la y2karl, which are often useful and entertaining.
posted by eddydamascene at 7:18 AM on March 18, 2005

One word, with each letter a different link, a la Ed? /kidding

It's not abused enough to need a limit, i don't think.

And eddy has a good point--i love those.
posted by amberglow at 7:57 AM on March 18, 2005

It wouldn't be possible to limit it based only on words that actually take up space on the front page? It seems like you could exempt title tags from the limit.
posted by anapestic at 7:58 AM on March 18, 2005

Just out of curiousity, has the post been amended since this thread appeared? Must have been, right?
posted by mediareport at 8:20 AM on March 18, 2005

Am I missing something? Was this already trimmed?

I mean, as it is, yes it has a paragraph break, which y'all know I hate, and the quote should probably have been y2karled down, but there are literally hundreds of posts that look like this. Why call out this particular one? Because the content is discomfiting, maybe?
posted by soyjoy at 8:22 AM on March 18, 2005

I posted this to feature requests. What im thinking of is a max on the actual size of the box that you put your link into, not a retroactive callout in the comments of "Your post was 5 characters too long!". Just make it long enough for ~100 words (paragraphish length).

The site is self policing, whip out your rent-a-cop badge instead. Plus your "paragraphish" idea stinks, no "ish" after "ph" in paragraph's length.
posted by thomcatspike at 8:23 AM on March 18, 2005

Just out of curiousity, has the post been amended since this thread appeared? Must have been, right?

Am I missing something? Was this already trimmed?

Looking at expriest's 10 posted threads, this is the longest. Maybe 3-4 lines more than the averaged 10 post. Really what gives? See no posting history that shows a post covering a computer screen. Sophist, do you have a blackberry?
posted by thomcatspike at 8:30 AM on March 18, 2005

Was this already trimmed?

Yes, I wish I could point to the original, but it was huge, took up the whole screen of my notebook.
posted by LarryC at 8:34 AM on March 18, 2005

Yes, it was huge. I had to run out to the store to buy an extra monitor just to view the post.
posted by sebas at 8:39 AM on March 18, 2005

I was confused too, but saw the original on my Bloglines feed. Here it is for reference:

Another Fan Of Torture Reveals Himself Eugene Volokh, a former clerk to Justice O'Connor and a leading voice in conservative legal circles has some interesting opinions on punishment:

[T]hough for many instances I would prefer less painful forms of execution, I am especially pleased that the killing — and, yes, I am happy to call it a killing, a perfectly proper term for a perfectly proper act — was a slow throttling, and was preceded by a flogging. The one thing that troubles me (besides the fact that the murderer could only be killed once) is that the accomplice was sentenced to only 15 years in prison, but perhaps there's a good explanation.

I am being perfectly serious, by the way. I like civilization, but some forms of savagery deserve to be met not just with cold, bloodless justice but with the deliberate infliction of pain, with cruel vengeance rather than with supposed humaneness or squeamishness. I think it slights the burning injustice of the murders, and the pain of the families, to react in any other way.

. . .

UPDATE: I should mention that such a punishment would probably violate the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause. I'm not an expert on the history of the clause, but my point is that the punishment is proper because it's cruel (i.e., because it involves the deliberate infliction of pain as part of the punishment), so it may well be unconstitutional. I would therefore endorse amending the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause to expressly exclude punishment for some sorts of mass murders.

Naturally, I don't expect this to happen any time soon; my point is about what should be the rule, not about what is the rule, or even what is the constitutionally permissible rule. I think the Bill of Rights is generally a great idea, but I don't think it's holy writ handed down from on high. Certain amendments to it may well be proper, though again I freely acknowledge that they'd be highly unlikely.


***

Pretty long, but as far as I know, this doesn't happen often enough to go for a technological solution. Matt may see more behind the scenes than we do, though.
posted by frykitty at 8:40 AM on March 18, 2005

Much ado about nothing. Please find something else to whine about.
posted by crunchland at 8:49 AM on March 18, 2005

OK, that explains it. Apparently the content being discomfiting is not the factor I thought, so I retract that. Someone hand me a pitchfork!
posted by soyjoy at 8:49 AM on March 18, 2005

Metafilter works best when it has diversity. An ecology of posting styles, of viewpoints, of found things, of nationalities, of genders, of - well, everything. A longing for conformity is surely testament to the desire not to be challenged.

Sure, there is a community 'norm', and I wouldn't want to see every post like the one cited in this complaint. Luckily - that's not what we have. But guys, whats wrong with tolerance? Why does a small deviation from the norm need a hard coded rigidity as a solution?
posted by dash_slot- at 8:50 AM on March 18, 2005

But guys, whats wrong with tolerance?

My pitchfork knows no tolerance.
posted by sebas at 9:12 AM on March 18, 2005

My flaming torch will illuminate the soul of...oh, fuck it.
posted by dash_slot- at 9:27 AM on March 18, 2005

Metafilter works best when it has diversity. An ecology of posting styles, of viewpoints, of found things, of nationalities, of genders, of - well, everything. A longing for conformity is surely testament to the desire not to be challenged.

The logical extension of this argument is that we should encourage posts on the front page to be in Serbo-Croatian or perhaps morse code, since that would increase diversity.

You can still have diversity if you have ten-word posts and hundred-word posts. It is evident from the subsequent editing that the post in question was too long for the front page. The ecology of MetaFilter would not have been irreparably harmed had the posting page forced two-thirds of that post into a more inside. Certainly, we can scroll past posts that we don't like, but we're also capable of judging whether a post is valuable from a paragraph. There is something about posting so much on the front page that seems to say "this post is so important that I'm taking up the whole page because you can't afford to miss it." I think that's misguided.
posted by anapestic at 9:47 AM on March 18, 2005

Well, we basically agree, anapestic. I know of another site that welcomes posts in other languages, and I'm not advocating Mefi goes down that route.

I am saying that this is a rare example of an overblown verbiage, and that IMHO it wasn't a federal offence, therefore required no new legislation. Rather like we wouldn't have any speed-bumps, if only 1 in 23,000 drivers went above the speed limit.

It's all water under the bridge now. Community norms will reassert themselves, till the next boyracer comes along to disturb the somnolent townsfolk, and claim his place in the stocks...
posted by dash_slot- at 10:09 AM on March 18, 2005

Ponder this, instead of metatalk space being wasted, could a comment in the thread been helpful instead; Hey newbie, use the “more inside” please, then move on.
Before it is requested; “more inside” is in the posting guidelines and the automatic feature has been requested more than once if it is not there now.

I think there is nothing wrong using comments in a thread for critique, especially new people.
The only comments I’ve seen from expriest are in the actual offending thread. Why are we here? Oh yea, want to see my MF badge it shines #14177 Move On!
posted by thomcatspike at 10:11 AM on March 18, 2005

alo mala, da li ti znas za neki drugi ritam?
posted by eddydamascene at 10:18 AM on March 18, 2005

Hey newbie, use the “more inside” please, then move on.

That would work just fine for me, but when that happens, then sometimes someone starts a MeTa thread to say that "MeTa is the appropriate place for call outs, and how dare you derail this urgent thread by commenting on it here, you heartless cretin." (I may have paraphrased a bit, but only a bit.) Offering constructive criticism around here is largely a thankless task, and no matter where you do it, someone's unhappy.

Anyway, while I think an email to the poster would have been the best thing here, that poster doesn't have a listed email address, and this post is a relatively legitimate use of MeTa, especially compared with many others we've seen of late.

On preview: what eddy said.
posted by anapestic at 10:28 AM on March 18, 2005

it seems like matt has solved this neatly on askme, and it's common sense that he implement the same thing for the blue when he rolls out the redesign. so encourage him to do that.
posted by quonsar at 10:35 AM on March 18, 2005

thomcatspike : "Ponder this, instead of metatalk space being wasted, could a comment in the thread been helpful instead; Hey newbie, use the “more inside” please, then move on."

Which would result in metatalk space being used to call out the person who posted the suggestion for pissing in the thread instead of taking it to MeTa.
posted by Bugbread at 11:57 AM on March 18, 2005

it seems like matt has solved this neatly on askme, and it's common sense that he implement the same thing for the blue when he rolls out the redesign. so encourage him to do that.

That encourages self-policing and implies that maybe people should endeavour to take up a bit less of the actual front page real estate with their individual posts. I'm pretty both of those are Good Things [tm].
posted by Ryvar at 12:08 PM on March 18, 2005

Pretty sure, even. Although I am pretty like a pony.
posted by Ryvar at 12:10 PM on March 18, 2005

Wasted MeTalk space?! No such thing. ;-P
posted by mischief at 12:50 PM on March 18, 2005

I do recognize that the feature will be useful on the Blue, but to tell the truth I don't look forward to it there. I think the homepage will look like crap, with a bunch of abbreviated headlines that don't reveal much on their own. People will put too much of their post in the MI, just like they do on AskMe, and it will become impossible to scan the homepage and get the whole gist of all the posts.

AskMe can be a real pain nowadays.

StupidComputerQuestionFilter [more inside]
How to handle DIVs in Opera [more inside]
New York Restaurants [more inside]

It's getting damn hard to tell if you can answer the question without clicking through to it. Ultimately it will become just as hard to tell if you want to read the post or skip it, without clicking through first.

I'd rather put up with the occasionally long post, although those are annoying.
posted by scarabic at 12:54 PM on March 18, 2005

Maybe specify that the first box is for a 2-4 sentence summary?
posted by Ryvar at 12:59 PM on March 18, 2005

> Which would result in metatalk space being used to call out the person who posted the suggestion for pissing in the thread instead of taking it to MeTa.
>That would work just fine for me, but when that happens, then sometimes someone starts a MeTa thread to say that "MeTa is the appropriate place for call outs
Yes, knew that and why my comment was brought up is that no where do you see expriest in this thread, just the offending thread. Which is why the question was asked, “why are we here?” To chat, or repeat ourselves until were blue in the face.
posted by thomcatspike at 1:11 PM on March 18, 2005

It would appear, then, that we have an unwinnable situation. The grey is the only permitted place for discussions of posting ettiquette, but not everyone reads the grey.
posted by Bugbread at 1:17 PM on March 18, 2005

Actually I would not be surprised if [more inside] didn't make it to the Blue. "Community Weblog," sure, but I can't see Matt encouraging people to post lengthy essays along with great links. Focus seems to be on links.
posted by scarabic at 1:21 PM on March 18, 2005

It would appear, then, that we have an unwinnable situation.

Congratulations. You have achieved enlightenment.

On the other question, there is plenty of middle ground between "Here's a link. [+]" and posting the entire text of Atlas Shrugged on the front page. I wouldn't want to see all of the posts on the front page be twenty-five words or less, either.
posted by anapestic at 1:52 PM on March 18, 2005

How about if there was a limit after which the Front Page text would stop and be followed by an elipsis (. . .) that links to the discussion page, where the full text is displayed (seemlessly)? In other words, not actually limiting the length, but limiting how much of it shows on the FP?
posted by Eideteker at 5:27 PM on March 18, 2005

it would suck if people were cut off mid-sentence tho.
posted by amberglow at 5:33 PM on March 18, 2005

amberglow: I'm not sure that it would suck if FPPs were aburptly
posted by mischief at 6:06 PM on March 18, 2005

oo--i have deja v
posted by amberglow at 6:29 PM on March 18, 2005

I thought we might be able to come up with a solution that allows diversity and creativity. That is why I posted here, to get some ideas for possible implementation. The major problem I see is characters vs. actual words on the page, as markup will create lots of characters in the box but not necessarily a too-long post. I want to state again that long posts are not necessarily bad, in fact some of the best discussions are generated by very long posts. The post in question, however, took up the entire front page with a two block quotes. This has been noted and fixed. While it is not something that comes up often, there is potential there to post an entire book. Should that even be possible?

And yes, I made up the word "paragraphish" and im very, very sorry. Thank you for your so-earnest policing efforts and I assure you it will never happen again, thomcatspike.
posted by sophist at 10:09 PM on March 18, 2005

(seemlessly)?

that would be unseamly.
posted by quonsar at 10:13 PM on March 18, 2005

oo--i have deja v

This is an excellent comment. I'm hoping that it just popped in to your head moments before you typed it, so if not just keep quiet and let me hold onto my dreams.
posted by soyjoy at 11:05 PM on March 18, 2005

Sophist it's a good point and a good discussion. It seems reasonable that at some point the Blue will have something that roughly corresponds to the Green in this way. It would just need to be reworded to make the purpose inescapably clear to posters.
posted by Ryvar at 11:24 PM on March 18, 2005

Eh, this is pretty much what self-policing is for. So long as nobody spends 5 dollars to FPP the dictionary again, I'll be fine with just giving the poster a slap on the wrist and a tip on the joys of [MI].

On the other hand, I don't think MI should become common to the Blue, as it encourages verbosity. While in the Green it's obviously important to get out as many details as possible when it comes to certain questions, the Blue values conciseness to an extent. It's more of a necessary evil than anything, for certain FPPs. Though, if you're just quoting out of your only link, you might question the necessity. However, if you've just got too many links in your FPP for the FP, the comments field is an excellent dumping ground, for sure.
posted by mek at 5:27 AM on March 19, 2005

And yes, I made up the word "paragraphish" and im very, very sorry. Thank you for your so-earnest policing efforts and I assure you it will never happen again, thomcatspike.

Arrrr...don’t be sorry, just sleep with your good eye open and watch your back.
Paragraphish was easily targeted, since "phish" can stink. Get the joke now -- Plus your "paragraphish" idea stinks, no "ish" after "ph" in paragraph's length.
posted by thomcatspike at 12:01 PM on March 19, 2005

Cats are supposed to love stinky fish, not hate on them.
posted by sophist at 1:50 PM on March 21, 2005

{{{Ruf}}}
posted by thomcatspike at 8:36 AM on March 22, 2005